I decided to get crafty this year with one of my gifts. I wanted to paint wine glasses for my secret Santa. I've done it once before and it didn't really work. My sister and I were planning her wedding and this is about the time Pinterest really blew up, especially for all things wedding. We found it online that we could paint our own glasses, so like most things we tried it. It went okay but not like we invisioned.
That is until I tried it once again. Moral of this story: if you believe it will work, if you believe in the project, if you believe you won't get burned as you put the glasses in the oven (more on that later), if you just believe it will all work out. And work out it did. I love them so much, I may make a set for myself.
I really really love how they came out. I'm glad I decided to paint the wine stems all black, it's more classic and really let's the polka dots shine.
For this I just went to Target to get the wine glasses, originally I was planning on getting 4 but didn't know if they sold them in a set or separately. They thankfully did, so I was able to put the finished product back in the box and wrap it later on.
Besides the glasses I had everything else on hand. I'm a craft hoarder. Seriously, name me something I probably have it or have something that could work in its place.
This next part is really important. I didn't take a picture of it (eek, dummy alert) before you do anything to the glasses, wipe them down with hydrogen peroxide. This helps clean the surface and allows the paint to grab onto a fresh surface.
If you follow me on Instagram you may have seen this sneak peak. Now you know what I was doing! I chose black, purple and raspberry pink. The pink isn't very raspberry, but it actually worked, labels lie sometimes.
Make sure you are painting with enamel paint. While I understand there are other paints, enamel paint is what you need for this project. Acrylic paint will do the job but once you wash it, all your hard work will be gone. Trust me from experience. Enamel paint.
I just took the rounded edge of one of my paint brushes and dipped in into my black paint. With no real grid or guideline I just started to dab,dab, dab the paint brush around my glass to create polka dots.
I did this with all the colors, but I finished one color before going onto the next.
Painting the stem was a challenge, the outside of the glass was still wet and I couldn't hold the stem to paint it. So I just put my hand in the glass and held it as I painted, this was the best way to do this.
I just took my black enamel paint and painted the stem and the bottom. Making sure you couldn't really see any brush strokes (thank you art classes) and made sure the surface was covered with enough paint. Do not glob it on, the stem is the hardest point to paint on the glass because of its small surface area, but if you use just enough paint it won't drip onto the sides or glob up. Glob up is so a phrase, btw, you can use it now.
Once you're all done painting, you need to preserve your work. If you're like me and don't have the full 21 days to let it air dry ( and let's be honest if we air dried it, I would probably touch it to see if it's done and then have a paw mark on it forever) you can just do the other step which isn't complicated at all. Preheat your oven to 350° and place your painted wine glasses on a cookie sheet.
Make sure they aren't touching but they are just enough apart to balance the cookie sheet since they are so light.
Then carefully, while chanting in your head "please don't break, please don't burn me" over and over again, place them on the top rack of the oven for 15 minutes. The bottle says 30 minutes, oven heatness varies, but at 15 minutes I was getting nervous. So nervous that I was starting to think the heat would shatter the glass and then I would be spending my night cleaning out glass in the oven. So 15 minutes worked for me. No shattered glass and preserved painted wine glasses for me.
I also said the chant over and over in my head while taking them out. Let them cool for about an hour on the cookie sheet. Then carefully remove them and you just made a painted wine glass!
Enjoy!
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